يحيى التليدي
كاتب وباحث سياسي
Yahya Al Talidi
Writer and Political Researcher

2023: Challenging beginnings and hopeful endings

With the beginning of a new year, begins the game of forecasts and predictions, and this year, international research centres and media institutions have demonstrated their capabilities by listing issues considered priorities, and anticipating the possibilities of their occurrence as well as what should be done about them.

However, the degree of the forecasters’ confidence in their expectations varies according to the extent of their belief in their understanding of what actually happened in the past.

Thus, you find that the most confidant of them are the ones most delusional in their belief that they fully understand the events of the past.

Today, we live in a world where data is abundant, accurate information is scarce, knowledge is monopolized, and wisdom is almost absent.

Since last year, the world has been struggling to overcome the covid-19 pandemic crisis, the repercussions of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the supply chain crisis, and the worsening inflation, despite the many solutions and tools that the central banks around the world have resorted to, whether by raising interest rates or printing money without a cover in agreement with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank so that it could cover the various financial obligations during the severe conditions that the world is facing, which had a very severe negative impact on most of the world’s economies, evident in the poor growth rates and the frustrating performance of financial markets.

While Indonesia was hosting the G-20 summit, President Joko Widodo said “The year 2023 will be a very difficult year, and global chaos may be an obstacle to the restoration of economic stability”.

Widodo’s said these brief but indicative words in the presence of the representatives of international economic powers without any of them objecting, suggesting they agree with his assessment.

This makes trying to predict the signs and signals of the year 2023 an important and necessary matter.

It seems that Africa will be the arena for the next economic boom, laying the foundation for a new economic race among the world’s major economic powers,  as China, the United States and Japan have been pouring huge amounts of various investments and aid in the continent.

This movement will bring about a qualitative shift in the components of supply and demand and raise economic growth rates in Africa.

Next April, India will overtake China as the country with the largest population, and with the continued decline in economic growth rates in China, there is a growing concern in Chinese economic circles about the impact of this on China’s plan to become the largest economy in the world.

Other issues need to be monitored as well, the most important of which is the developments of the Russian-Ukrainian war, which given the positions of the two sides of the crisis so far, may extend for another year.

Furthermore, other issues represent time bombs, such as Taiwan, Kashmir, Western Sahara, Lebanon’s southern border, North Korea and its constant threats to the countries in its vicinity.

However, inflation remains the most serious challenge, as the rising cost of living has become a problem for most people around the world, which will cause fears among governments about increasing riots, crime, and insecurity.

Even though 2023 seems to be an auspicious year full of challenges and hardships, it may also be a remarkable and important opportunity for some countries to ease or even get past some deep political differences, giving the world a comfortable space to breathe and hope, as challenges often provide opportunities for the well-prepared to seize them, which is what 2023 may bring.

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